Carl Zeiss Lenses: where is it from?

[Seele]

I think the many repeated questions here (and forums everywhere) would warrant this as a sticky.

"I have a Carl Zeiss something lens; is it real, or is it the same as something else?"

This question has cropped up at very regular intevals in many forums and I always answer the same thing about a handful of times every year. It seems a quick run-down is appropriate.

First of all, if a lens is marked "Carl Zeiss Jena" it does not mean it is the name of the firm. Traditionally, the location of the firm is marked on the lens as well, like "Ross London", "Schneider Kreuznach", "Steinheil Munchen" etc. So the name of the firm is "Carl Zeiss", or more appropriately, Carl Zeiss Optical, located in Jena.

When Carl Zeiss, located at Jena, first entered the photographic lens business in 1890-1891, all the lenses were, of course, marked "Carl Zeiss Jena". Since this earliest days, Zeiss lens designs were licenced to other manufacturers, often ending up in double-barrel names, such as "Ross Zeiss", or "Ross, Zeiss Patent" etc. Part of this licencing agreement was that, the lenses had to be exactly the same as those made by Zeiss themselves, but the various licencees were free to do what they liked with external styling. For example, optically a "Ross Zeiss" lens is identical to the same built by Zeiss but the lens barrel was styled to resemble all other lenses by Ross.

After WWII, Carl Zeiss in Jena continued to operate and continued to mark their lenses as before. As Jena was located in the Soviet-occupied zone, which later became East Germany (DDR), the Americans wanted their own Zeiss operations. A new Zeiss optical firm was established in Oberkochen, which of course could not mark its products as "Carl Zeiss Jena", but merely "Carl Zeiss". During the period of legal wrangling between the two firms, Oberkochen used the name "Zeiss Opton" instead of "Carl Zeiss" until it earned the rights to use that in the western countries. However, for lenses exported to the eastern bloc, "Zeiss Opton" carried on being used for years afterwards.

While Jena lost its rights to use the Carl Zeiss name in many markets, lenses exported to these countries were marked "C.Z. Jena", etc, ultimately "aus Jena". In the UK, however, the court rulings was somewhat more Solomonic, where both firms were allowed to use the Carl Zeiss name.

Oberkochen carried on (and still carries on) with the licencing business, and also did a lot of subcontracting too. Regarding licencing, these days, lenses for Sony, and even Nokia camera-phones and Logitec webcams bear the "Carl Zeiss" name but Carl Zeiss never admitted to having any input in their designs. In subcontracting, Oberkochen used Tomioka (the lens division of Yashica, later Kyocera) to build lenses for the Contax/Yashica series of cameras, and now Cosina is responsible for building Carl Zeiss lenses for both SLR and M-mount cameras.

Jena carried on with its business and became a major supplier of lenses to the cameras by KW/Pentacon establishment, and also supplied lenses to whoever manufacturer desiring their lenses. For instance, Bronica at the time used Nikon lenses but for a relatively brief period, some of the "Zenzanon" lenses were supplied by Jena and conspicuously marked as such.

In 1985, Carl Zeiss of Jena took over practically all the photographic equipment manufacturer in the DDR, this acquiring the rights to put its name on whichever product they wished. Many Meyer-built Pentacon lenses, mainly for Praktica B-series cameras, had the name "Pentacon" replaced by "Carl Zeiss Jena P".

About this time there came what can be called the "British" Carl Zeiss Jena lenses. The British operation of Carl Zeiss Jena wanted to expand its product range. With the blessing from Jena, two series of lenses were offered under the name "Carl Zeiss Jena", and the zoom lenses were called "Jenazoom". These lenses have no input from Jena at all, and are built by Japanese makers. It can be considered as a form of licencing too, and not very different from what Oberkochen is doing now.

I hope this should answer a few questions.

[patrickh]

With this kind of screwed up history it's a miracle that Zeiss lenses managed to retain the legendary status they have. Thanks for the history.


patrickh

[FernandoB12]

Hi Seele,
Thaks for the information. I have a Jenazoom made in Japan, that I hardly looked for any information. So I wrote a mail to Car Zeiss and received this answer.

from Larry Gubas <larrygubas>
to Fernando Braile <fbraile>
date Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 1:34 PM
subject Re: Help
mailed-by gmail.com
signed-by gmail.com
hide details Dec 8 (12 days ago)
This lens is most probably an M 42 mount which is consistent with East German standard and is identical to the Pentax 44 mm diameter screw mount. Most other cameras have the ability to be mounted to this lens via an fairly common adapter. The East German version of Zeiss contracted with the Sigma firm in Japan to manufacture photographic lenses of this sort according to their East German specification and design.

These lenses were rarely imported into the US (where I reside) and so we do not have very much documentation on them at all.

Larry Gubas
Zeiss Historica

[Seele]

Fernando,

It seems Larry missed his mark somewhat! I lived in the UK at the time and I knew various people in the UK involved in the Jenazoom project, and also had sources in Dresden and Jena. In fact I have a copy of the Jenazoom II catalogue issued in the UK, stating the lenses were available in mounts for Canon, Nikon AiS, Minolta, Olympus, Contax/Yashica (MM), K-mount (PK/AR), M42, Praktica-B, and Fuji AX.

Another publication was issued to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the CZJ operation in the UK from 1985, in which it says, effectively, that the Jenazoom family of lenses was an initiative from CZJ UK, and endorsed by CZJ. That is why I call those lenses as "British" CZJ.

These days people tend to think of these lenses like, "they're built in Japan and being East German, Carl Zeiss Jena has to be rubbish anyway". and yet they have no problem accepting "Carl Zeiss" marked lenses on Sony, Nokia, Logitech products. That's a bit illogical, I suppose. In fact I have heard claims that ALL lenses marked "Carl Zeiss Jena" are fakes, because the East Germans put together a counterfeit firm called "Carl Zeiss Jena" in the hope of fooling customers by pretending to have something to do with Zeiss!

Several years ago when Sony started using "Carl Zeiss" lenses on their digital cameras, a lot of people said they must be good as Carl Zeiss built the lenses in Oberkochen and then shipped them to Sony for assembly. Someone wrote to Carl Zeiss for confirmation and received a very carefully worded reply, which basically said those lenses were of sufficient quality to wear the Carl Zeiss name.

[FernandoB12]

Seele,
Thanks for all the information. It is the lens that I have. I didn't use it yet, it has a Minolta mount and I use Nikon body and I have to send it to service to kill fungus.

[Orio]

The story, put this way, looks too punishing on Zeiss. Like all companies coming from the XIX century, or from the first half of XX century, Zeiss had to adapt to the post-war consumerist age in order not to disappear.
Before WWII, photography used to be an expensive and élite hobby. Only few lucky families were wealthy enough to own a photo camera. For this reason, there was no mass production.
After WWII the scenario changed abruptly. Photography became a mass market phenomenon. New companies arised that were offering equipment at a fraction of the price, by way of lower manpower cost and by cuts on the quality of materials and the automation of building stages.
The choice Zeiss had to face, was to either change their production methods, or disappear. Or become an elitist brand like Leica, which choosed to keep their production amount on an almost pre-war level, and to address only the high end market. But Zeiss was never an elitist company. Zeiss has always been in the middle section of the market, and even in the pre war era, they supplied with their lenses, most of the other camera makers, including the most affordable ones.
The decision Zeiss made to outsource camera and lens production to Yashica, was only a compromise on manpower costs, not on the quality of the designs and the materials. Differently from other outsourcing companies, Zeiss continued to design their lenses in Oberkochen, with some of the top world's lens designers, and to the highest building standards of the time. And they equipped Yashica with their crafting tools and teaching personnel. It is enough to hold one Contax SLR lens in the hands to understand that this was all but a cheap Asia-made product.
I don't know about the current cooperation with Cosina. I never had and of the newest lenses, so I can not speak about them. But I have a lot of Contax SRL lenses and I can for sure say that there is no quality difference between the Japan made lenses and the lenses build in Germany.
In conclusion it seems to me that Zeiss has been able to outsource their products and keep themselves alive in a wild market, while at the same time keeping a quality level that is higher than the average, and keeping the tradition of manual focusing lenses alive even in an age when anything that is not computerized or fully automated risks to become suddenly obsolete.
To me, this sounds like a story of a success with integrity. A compromise maybe, but one with a dignity. Other companies, like Canon, managed to get a greater success, but whether they kept the integrity of the quality of their products, it remains to be seen, judging by the number of people who report to have returned their newly acquired L lenses for quality control...
As for licensing Zeiss name for mobile phone "lenses"... it should be obvious that this is only a marketing strategy to get some important income and finance the company so that it can stay on the market and keep producing SLR and rangefinder lenses of high quality and relatively affordable price.
If you like, it's something like Ferrari which licenses their name to the producers of perfumes and laptop computers... they get a share of income, but the quality of production of Ferrari cars is not affected by this side market. The same goes with Zeiss and mobile phones.

[Seele]

Orio,

What you said was indeed true. However, do bear in mind that in the wider picture, photographic products have always been just one part of the Zeiss product range; after all, Zeiss was already an established company producing a variety of optical and scientific products before entering the photographic equipment market.

To the vast majority of people, mention the name Carl Zeiss will make them think about photographic lenses - and some times binoculars - and little more. And this is an opportunity Zeiss could not afford to miss: Zeiss cannot possibly sell a planetarium every other week, but if the - relatively speaking - "mass market" is willing to buy lenses wearing the Zeiss name, then it would be silly not to have such lenses on the market.

[Excalibur]

Well I think it is outrageous that you can buy a camera with the name Zeiss on it, and it's nothing to do with Zeiss. Surely there is a consumer law under the trades description act to stop joe public being duped as e.g. my son was boasting his camera phone or whatever had a Zeiss lens but it could be made/designed by anybody.
Someone showed me their new P&S camera last year and it had a Zeiss lens, well I told her " I don't know much about digital but it will be a good camera because of the zeiss lens"...so was I duped.
What about the Yashica T4/T5 is that lens designed by zeiss? Well my initial tests shows a Nikon L35ad beats it for sharpness, so from that result would think Zeiss lenses can be crappy.

[seuret]

I knew for years that Zeiss doesn't have anything in common with Sony's lenses. It's not a surprise.
Hmmm, does Leica produce the lenses for Panasonic? What do you think?
The article is great, anyway. I didn't know about the so called "British" Zeiss:).
I have only one Zeiss lens, it's CZJ Sonnar 180:).

[Sevo]

[Sevo]

[Seele]

[Orio]

[Excalibur]

[Arkku]

[Arkku]

[Orio]

[no-X]

[estudleon]

Very interesant question. Thanks for all, the share information is great.

I remember when wanted to buy a rollei 35 RF cam. There were two options, a german with tessar lens and a singapur version with sonnar ones.

Differences? CQ. The tessar (german cam) had better CQ and the sonnar (singapur cam) had poor CQ, problem that was common to Rollei 35s made in singapur. The lenses elements were imported from germany and assambled in singapur. All that I said was told me by the rollei's importer and technic service in Argentina. In shutterbug I read something similar thing

Sonnar was a known zeiss design (effective trade mark or not), the people buy sonnar, buy zeiss. And were a lot of dogs in the rollei cams with zeiss name (and a lot of very good ones too). But this isn't the known zeiss history.

Rino.

[Orio]

[Arkku]

[Excalibur]

This thread is getting confusing, so:-

If the Zeiss name is mentioned on any camera now or the past, does it mean Zeiss designed the lens for that camera, not necessary actually made it?

[Seele]

Excalibur,

Not invariably; during the "British" Carl Zeiss Jena period, a camera marked "Carl Zeiss Jena" was offered which was actually a re-badged Chinon. This, I believe, is a one-off anomoly, however.

[Sevo]

[seuret]